Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov

Previously in the collection of the family of the artist, Moscow

Moscow and Leningrad, Exhibition of the USSR Academy of Arts, 1974

I.Nenarokomova, 'Pimenov' in Sovetskaya zhivopis' '74, Moscow, 1974, pp.98-100
A.Sidorov, Yuri Ivanovich Pimenov, Moscow: Sovetsky khudozhnik, 1986, p.193, No.413

Original canvas. There is some light surface dirt. No signs of retouching under UV light. Held in a simple painted wood frame and unexamined out of frame.
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It is a hot evening, two construction workers return from site and tempted by the water, park their lorry to cool off. The clear narrative thread in The Creation of the World allows for a face-value interpretation, yet the title suggests a more complex work. Is this a Muscovite Eden? A bucolic idyll for a Soviet Adam and Eve? In her 1974 essay on the painting, I.Nenarokomova sees the cranes silhouetted against the horizon as an 'embodiment of the unceasing creative force of the country', the great trailer 'an attribute of the technical age'. Yet man's relationship with the contrasting forces of industrial progress and nature is ambiguous; naked and sunburnt, is man in a more harmonious state in elemental surroundings? The lack of extraneous detail and the strong, somewhat unsettling vertical composition of the painting forces the viewer to answer the challenging gaze of the two figures who confront him. In a post-Soviet era viewers cannot fail to echoes of Zamyatin's novel We.

As Sidorov writes in his 1986 monograph on the artist, 'The Creation of the World goes beyond the framework of everyday life, both prosaic or lyrical, and achieves a timeless value, touching on eternal questions about beauty, meaning and the values of human existence'. 'The unusual nature of the everyday', as Pimenov titled his 1964 book, encapsulates this dichotomy between the epic and the routine.

Pimenov's urban landscapes are highly sought after and the offered lot is unusual in its semi-pastoral subject, yet the extreme fringes of Moscow, where the city impinged on the countryside fascinated the artist. He would walk there often. 'Through the thin birch trunks you can see on the horizon tall white buildings, dozens of them filling the horizon. They recall the constructivist dreams of our youth... a life unrepeatable and impossible to replicate'. Pimenov was awarded the Order of Lenin in the year the offered lot was painted and he is still considered one of the most accomplished painters of the Soviet era. The Creation of the world ranks among his most powerful and subtle works.